Indie Science Fiction Cinema Today by Fernandez-Vander Kaay Kathleen Vander Kaay Chris

Author:Fernandez-Vander Kaay, Kathleen,Vander Kaay, Chris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Published: 2018-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Last Man (2000)

Writer-Director: Harry Ralston

Starring David Arnott, Jeri Ryan, Dan Montgomery, Jr.

Alan, the last human being on Earth, devotes some of his time to starting a series of video journals chronicling his circumstances and positing the “way forward” if anyone ever finds his recordings. Then he meets Sarah, a beautiful woman, and while she isn’t very interested in him, he is happy; being the last two people on Earth should be enough to give him a chance. But when Alan and Sarah are joined by Raphael, a much more handsome and capable man, Alan hatches a plan to whittle the world back down to just two.

The Last Man is a fun hybrid of the empty city films of the past (The World, the Flesh, and the Devil and The Quiet Earth) with the neurotic relationship comedies of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks. A quiet but clever commentary about the difference between ideals and executable realities is played out in the juxtaposition between Alan’s recordings and his behavior. The movie uses the microcosm of a volatile relationship to show the difficulty of human interpersonal dynamics.

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Harry Ralston began his career with the short film Chicken Delight (1991); it would be nearly a decade before he made The Last Man. In the interim, he built up experience and relationships that would help bring the film to reality. As an actor-producer on the comedy Men Cry Bullets, he met Jeri Ryan, who would later star in The Last Man. A connection to Roger Avary (who produced The Last Man) also led Ralston to work on Avary’s The Rules of Attraction. Ralston described how the film was born from a single thought that germinated over the years.

Harry Ralston: In college, I jotted down a line in a notebook: “Dave’s Guide to the Universe.” I pictured some meek guy as the last person on Earth, who now had the opportunity to teach future people how to live by his own rules and philosophy. Years later, when I was looking for an independent feature to make, it occurred to me that idea might be cheap to shoot. I didn’t realize getting rid of people was more expensive than keeping them around.

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